Significant numbers of American evangelicals have come to find ancient liturgical forms meaningful, a welcome alternative to the folksy informality typical of many Protestant churches today, especially ‘big-box’ nondenominational congregations. In liturgical churches, these seekers find a stronger historical consciousness and a reverence that contrasts with the irreverent style of their tradition-less ‘tradition.’
They may also discover a better balance of word and sacrament with, for example, a more frequent celebration of holy communion. And traditional hymnody can appeal to those looking for something more doctrinally meaty than many contemporary praise choruses. The solemnity, formality, and reverence that characterizes such worship constitutes an attractive antidote for the pop-culture atmosphere that prevails in many evangelical Sunday services.
Though liturgical, the liberal theology of the Episcopal Church discouraged many evangelicals from considering the Anglican tradition. Recently, the creation of the more conservative Anglican Church in North America in 2010 has provided an attractive option. This new-found love for all things liturgical may overlook, however, an important question: how much of what today's pilgrims associate with Anglicanism is actually Anglican? The answer may surprise many of the faithful traveling on the Canterbury Trail. Careful historical investigation paints a different picture from what many have come to assume.
One simple way to illuminate and clarify the historical reality is to revisit a nineteenth-century attempt to regulate worship in the Protestant Episcopal Church. In 1871, General Convention heard and debated a special bishops’ committee report on a host of controversial practices. The canons proposed in the report ultimately failed to be approved (due to practical concerns about enforcement) but their specific prohibitions are truly telling. An excerpt from the report is revealing:
They [the bishops] recommend that certain acts in the administration of the Holy Communion, and on other occasions of public worship, hereinafter enumerated, be prohibited by canon, to wit:
(1.) The use of incense.
(2.) Placing or retaining a crucifix in any part of the church.
(3.) Carrying a cross in procession in the church.
(4.) The use of lights on or about the holy table, except when necessary [i.e., for light].
(5.) The elevation of the elements in the Holy Communion in such manner as to expose them to the view of the people as objects toward which adoration is to be made…
(6.) The mixing of water with the wine as part of the service, or in presence of the congregation.
(7.) The washing of the priest's hands, or the ablution of the vessels, in the presence of the congregation.
(8.) Bowings, crossings, genuflections, prostrations, reverences, bowing down upon or kissing the holy table, and kneeling, except as [previously] allowed, provided for, or directed, by rubric or canon....”*
In other words, what are now widely accepted practices were viewed in 1871 as unAnglican innovations. In fact, from the mid sixteenth century to the late nineteenth century—a period of more than three centuries—the Sunday services of most Anglican parishes in England and North America did not look radically different from those of most other Anglo-American Protestant churches.
Nor were these proposed canons drafted by a narrow faction of low churchmen but by a committee of bishops of diverse churchmanship. Mentioned later in the report were additional practices today assumed to be thoroughly Anglican, including clergy wearing medieval vestments such as chasubles or multicolored stoles. These garments had long been viewed as reflecting a sacerdotal understanding of the ordained ministry.
The proscribed ceremonies were not entirely new, of course. Their revival was fruit of a movement that would prove to have an enormous impact on the Anglican communion worldwide. Their recovery from the medieval past was part of a larger project to modify or undo key features of the Elizabethan religious settlement. By the 1840s, some high churchmen viewed the Reformation as a broken limb that had been set incorrectly. The original leaders of the Oxford Movement held that the Reformers had gone too far but, significantly, they tended not to support controversial changes in clerical vesture or ceremonial.
The following generation, however, was not so restrained. Inspired by visits to Roman Catholic parishes on the Continent, and influenced by an antimodern romanticism, these Ritualists (as the press labelled them at the time) sought to retrieve medieval ritual. The pervasive influence of this Anglo-Catholic movement is difficult to overstate. Distinguished church historian Diarmaid MacCulloch puts it bluntly: "The nineteenth century growth of Anglo-Catholicism amounted to nothing less than an ideological revolution in the Church of England…." Among other things, it represents the main reason Anglican worship looks the way it does today, especially in North America where the low church, evangelical party either died out or was marginalized long ago.
But, apart from some pedantic historical point, why does any of this matter? Many of these medieval practices can be readily dismissed as “adiaphora,” or "things indifferent." As long as one takes care to avoid attaching superstitious beliefs to these ceremonies, they are at worst harmless, and some may teach helpful spiritual truths. Take, for instance, the imposition of ashes on the first day of Lent. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer dispensed with the practice due to assorted superstitions that had arisen around it. Given our different cultural context today, it may be safe to restore the practice today. A physical reminder of human mortality and the need for repentance can certainly be beneficial.
At the same time, some of the innovations targeted by the bishops in 1871 were historically associated with certain medieval teachings about the Lord’s Supper and the nature of the Christian ministry. Is the sacrament a spiritual feast on a completed sacrifice, or a re-offering of the Son to the Father on an altar by a sacrificing priest? The English Reformers tore out stone altars in most English churches and replaced them with “honest tables” because they rejected the latter view. Leaders of the Anglo-Catholic movement clearly understood the theological significance of the medieval vestments, church decoration and elaborate ceremonial. Many saw their borrowings from the pre-Reformation church as an effective way to change the Anglican church’s teaching without a direct attack on the “incurably Protestant” 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the Thirty-Nine Articles.
In our post-modern age, people often assert that they are free to assign their own chosen meaning or significance to anything. “These things mean what I say they mean,” many declare. For them, the historical background is irrelevant. Thoughtful Christians should resist this tendency. Instead, we should study the theological rationale behind the Reformers’ prohibitions and take care to exercise some historically informed discernment. Some may conclude that the Reformers were mistaken but that conclusion should be arrived at based upon theological reflection and not smuggled in via an aesthetic medievalism.
*Source: Journal of the Proceedings of the Bishops, Clergy, and Laity of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America Assembled in a General Convention 1871. Appendix XI, pp. 598-601. Report of the Special Committee Appointed by the House of Bishops, 1868, on Ritual Uniformity
